We may as well start out by discussing the heavy-hitter of word processors, Microsoft Word. Love it or hate it, it’s hard to deny that it’s been the go-to PC application for the majority of writers for the past twenty-something years. It hasn’t gotten quite the same traction on the Mac, but it’s still way up there in popularity. For years, people said Microsoft would never make a version for the iPad. Well, they finally did, and they didn’t botch it.
Wibbly-Wobbly Costs and Subscription Requirements
Word is just one part of the suite called Microsoft Office. For the iPad, the currently-available apps include Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and OneNote. Related apps include OneDrive and the new Sway app. There is no version of Access or Publisher currently for the iPad.
In the beginning, Microsoft said the app would be free to download, but if you wanted to be able to save your documents, you would have to invest in an Office365 account, with a typical subscription cost of about $99 a year. This wasn’t horrible if you needed a full version of office on your regular computer anyway, but it was incredibly expensive compared to almost any other iPad app. Then, a couple of months ago, they changed the requirements again, now allowing truly unlimited usage for free. There’s no real catch to it, other than they hope to hook you in so you buy the subscription for your desktop system. For our concerns, it really is free now.
The iPad version of Word works best with Microsoft OneDrive, but that’s free as well, so it’s not a hardship. They also recently announced a partnership with Dropbox to seamlessly load and save your files on that service. I have had issues with OneDrive, so I don’t do much with it, but I am a big fan of Dropbox, so that works well in my case.
So Is It Good for Writing, Or what?
Microsoft Word on the iPad works brilliantly for writers. I haven’t run into a file yet that doesn’t load on the iPad. I’ve done editing of book-length documents on the iPad, with “Track-Changes” enabled. It works flawlessly for me. It works with my external bluetooth keyboard, and as far as I can tell, also seems to work well with third-party software keyboard such as Swype. If anything, the on-screen keyboard is the biggest limiting factor with typing on the iPad, but that’s not a problem limited to Word alone.
It has all the usual features involved with writing and formatting, including the aforementioned track changes feature. Let me tell you, it’s nice to be able to edit someone’s book while sitting in the doctor’s office waiting room. As far as non-basic word-processing tasks, it lets you work with tables, images, headers and footers, shapes, links, footnotes, citations, multiple columns, portrait or landscape page layouts, comments, and a lot of other stuff. I’m sure there are some advanced features of the desktop version that are missing, but everything I need as a writer is here.
Probably the most complicated thing I do with Word on the desktop is prepare my manuscripts for publishing on CreateSpace. This usually involves copying my text into a template supplied by CreateSpace. This template has margins with gutters, page numbers, table of contents, and formatting that alternates on every other page. Word for iPad can handle it. I can paste my text in, overwriting their placeholders, save the file, and upload it to them without ever turning my Mac on.
Bottom line: It’s worth getting and learning for the iPad. It’s easily the most feature-packed free word processor for the iPad. I’m not going to say this is all things for all people, but if you like using Word on your “big computer,” then you can probably get a lot out of Word for the iPad.
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